Recently, a so-called digital video camera for capturing a moving image becomes widespread. In connection therewith, a technique of simply editing a moving image captured by such digital video camera at home is desired.
However, in a conventional so-called editing of moving image, in a case where from a variety of image material including a successful image and an unsuccessful image captured by such digital video camera, for example, only a successful image is continuously reproduced, generally, the following work is necessary: for example, newly editing the captured image after the capturing of image to produce a moving image in which only successful portions are connected to each other, or manually selecting the image material to produce a so-called reproduction list, or selecting image material to be reproduced, and reproducing it each time the image material is reproduced.
In order to respond to the above desire of simple editing, at the time of later editing (reproducing) a moving image captured by such digital video camera, a variety of technique of understanding an intention of person who has captured a moving image to automatically select an important portion from the captured moving image to assist a person (a viewer) who edits the moving image to do a work has been developed, as shown in, for example, the following Patent Document 1, and Patent Document 2.
That is, in the Patent Document 1, the arrangement is as follows: in a video recorder which is capable of capturing both of a moving image and a still image, and records each image in a separate medium, a timing at which a moving image and a still image have been captured simultaneously is regarded as an important scene in a moving image, and a flag is preserved on a recording medium of moving image or still image, and a priority in an editing work is raised for a moving image before and after the timing.
The Patent Document 2 discloses an arrangement in which by specifying a portion whose image signal or audio signal meets a predetermined standard in a captured moving image, a portion of high priority in the moving image is detected. More specifically, the following arrangement is disclosed: for example, a portion in which a face of specific person is image-captured, a portion in which an operation of zoom-in has been carried out at the time of image-capturing, a portion in which a volume of corresponding sound exceeds a predetermined value, or the like is specified as an important portion, and such specified portions are extracted from a file of moving image corresponding to a captured moving picture, and are connected to each other, so that an automatic editing of moving image is carried out for such important portion.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-359804    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-176613